


Family Duties

by spiffycups



Category: Baahubali (Movies)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M, Modern AU, One Big Happy Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 19:02:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13130049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiffycups/pseuds/spiffycups
Summary: This is just a bunch of happy Christmas fluff





	Family Duties

**Author's Note:**

> I figured there are people who aren't writing each other fics for the MiM challenge, so this is my gift to all you fans who aren't participating in the challenge this Christmas. I know i cant give each of you presents, so im just going to leave this as my present to everyone on here.  
> Merry Christmas, and happy reading.  
> To my fandom family: I'm very happy to have found you guys in 2017, and built such good friendships, and to the new people in the fandom: hi, i hope you have a good time with us! come say hi.

It’s Christmas Eve and Amarendra is honking desperately, leaning onto the steering wheel hoping the line will move. It has been three hours and he has deliberately not answered any call from home. He thinks he cannot face his family now, being late on this once-a-year special evening. ‘You promised!’ he can see Mahendra’s tear-filled eyes in front of him, the three-feet tall hobbit with his trembling chin and clenched fists. He glances once more at his phone where the alert glares back disapprovingly at him.

One hour later, he slides into the driveway guiltily, switching off the engine and letting the car glide to its stop. The lights are all switched off already, the house looks empty from the outside. He knocks off his shoes inside the car and pads up softly to the front door, opening it as quietly as the key will turn. Closing it behind him, he turns and straightens, sighing into the dark and empty room. As he is pulling off his socks leaning against the wall, the lights come on and his wife and son scream at him.

“AAAAHHH Deva!” he falls off the wall, landing on his bum with one leg buckling out and one knee side-ways, hands in front of him.

“AAAAAHH darling!” screams Devasena at the same time, throwing a pan full of snow onto him.

“AAAAAHH daddy!” yells Mahendra. The boy is seated on the sofa, arms crossed in front of his chest, eyes popping out of their sockets in his anger. “Get him, Amma!” he waves his hands wildly.

“Deva!” Amarendra tries to up and run for it, but the little angry snowball is barreling into his prone frame and hitting him with its tiny fists. He wriggles under the chill of the off-white snow that is half inside his work shirt and melting against his chest, trying not to get any on his son. Mahendra is all noise and fury, yelling incomprehensibly about time and parties and promises. After about three minutes of this two-pronged assault, Devasena takes pity on him and pulls the noise machine off of him and places it two feet away where it continues its yelling.

“And then, and then you weren’t there, and then Uncle Bhalla gave me two presents and said to put below the tree, and-“

“under the tree” corrects Bhalla from the kitchen.

“Oh, great, I see everyone is here.” Mutters Amarendra with a grin.

“Good to see you. You’re not very good to look at, though.” Bhalla saunters in, leaning against the archway of the living room and the kitchen. “Missed one hell of a party, yes you did.” He sing-songs the line, rolling his eyes comically. He stops sucking on a candy cane, taking it out of his mouth to point the sharp tip at Devasena. “No better host in all of Mahishmathi. The samosas were something else.”

Devasena raises her hands in mock surrender. “Credit where it’s due: Kattappa did the cooking. I was décor.”

Amarendra stares around the house, seeing it covered from ceiling to floor in red and white and green. “I’m so sorry, my dears.” He looks from his brother to his wife and his son. “I really wanted to be here. I missed something big.” He looks dejected, and Devasena can’t bear to see him frowning.

“Well then, make it up to us!” she cries out. “The driveway is smooth and clear. Needs some decorating!”

“Yes, Appa, yes it does!” Mahendra’s mood has changed again, having spent five minutes snuggling into his father’s side. “Let’s make two snowmans.”

“Snowmen. Why two?” asks Amarendra.

“One big one is you, one small one is me.” His eyes are gleaming with excitement, cheeks pink and lips soft and rose, hair falling across his forehead in curls that take after his father.

“Alright! Let me get some dinner, and we can-“

“Dashed out of luck. We closed up on the kitchen two hours ago.” Bhalla grimaces at him.

“But you’re – you’re eating right now!” Amarendra looks from Bhalla to Devasena, neither face looking forgiving. “Come on man!”

“I don’t know… Deva what do you think?” Bhalla turns to his sister thoughtfully, stroking his beard.

“I think we’ve got some coleslaw in the freezer. I could put it on a plate …” she shrugs apologetically.

“Aw, come on guys! I’m hungry as a hippo here. I could eat a horse!” Amarendra only ever begs his family for anything. “Give a man some food, it’s Christmas after all.”

“Yes Amma, give Appa some food!” the boy stands between his parents, hands on his small hips, lips pressed together in a determined façade of a fight.

Devasena laughs, the amusement bubbling out of her in a stream of musical sound, her glossy bangs falling into her eyes. “Go build your snowman and I’ll bring you your food. Go on, go!” She watches her boys walk out in their thick coats. Bhalla finishes his texts and moves to follow them out when she grabs him by the back of his collar. “And where exactly do you think you’re going?”

He motions to the father-and-son duo who are outside stomping about on the snow.

“Funny you’d think that. I can’t think why you’d think _I’d_ be the one to get into cooking _now_ , but anyway, it doesn’t matter. Go do the cutting or the boiling or whatever it is one must do with rice and potatoes and leftover samosas. Chop chop!” she walks away, leaving a defeated Bhalla to get back to the kitchen.

“And I JUST wiped it all down.” He mumbles, even as he puts on music and picks out pots. It’s a family secret that he is the best cook of them all. Devasena can’t cook except to curdle milk entirely on accident, and Amarendra and Bhalla had been taught to cook and run a house by the time they turned twenty. Amarendra could manage, and his skill was with cleaning, whereas Bhalla had the best touch of them all. He could create something out of anything, and never had his produce been anything but delicious. They had tried to sabotage him several times in good fun, but his luck would always right whatever wrong the universe did his kitchen.

Devasena goes up to their bedroom and picks up the SLR camera she bought recently. Coaxing it out of its cushioned box, she slings it around her neck as she sits on the top of the slide that comes down from their lounge upstairs into the garage on the ground level. She pulls down her jeans from where she’s rolled them up to her calves, slips on her boots and joins her boys on the lawn. It’s not windy, only moderately chilly, so she lets her hair stay in its sock bun without a hat.

Mahendra is a sight to behold. The boy who is sometimes incredibly serious and mature, choosing to read instead of play, and to paint instead of box, is now tumbling in the snow pawing at his father, legs thrown across his broad chest trying to straddle him and overpower him. Amarendra is putting up a genuine fight, using his strength for defense and acting as a block of muscle. It is beginning to look a lot like a cub fighting a lion, and Devasena hurriedly reaches for her camera. Even as she clicks it, she knows they are out of focus, and the photo is shaky and blurry, if not downright whited-out, but she clicks anyway because these are memories she wants to have forty years in the future.

The smell of cocoa wafts from the kitchen window, the street is entirely quiet except for her family’s laughter and sounds, and the street lamps cast a yellow light onto the off-white snow hugging the ground, encasing Mahendra and Amarendra in stripes of colour and darkness as they roll over and over, laughing loudly, faces lit up in joy and contentment, and Devasena does not want any presents as much as she wants this moment to last forever.

As soon as she thinks that, the moment is ruined, by her brother in law. A well-rounded snowball hits her smack in the back of her head, and as she turns, gasping in shock, he has already set loose another one from his small mountain of snowballs. Devasena looks around and finds no shelter. In a few seconds, her husband and child will notice the snow fight and will join in, and she cannot count on them to be her allies. Deciding in a second, she bends low and charges straight at Bhalla, using the two seconds of surprise she has as a headstart as she scoops up snow in her low-slung hands. He is shouting and throwing another, and she cannot move zig-zag if she has to retain the snowball shape, so she abandons defense in favour of offense and tackles him head-first onto the snow.

Bhalla falls backward with Devasena on top of him, his face a mix of fear and guilt and evident displeasure at having lost to gravity. She pulls the collar of his shirt noticing the cocoa stains and stuffs the snow in her hands down his front, making him squeal and wriggle about ungainly on the already-cold ground.

“Deva, you criminal!” he shouts, shaking out his shirt and patting out the cold handfuls of snow.

She wants to reply ‘All is fair in love and war’ but her mouth is currently occupied with eating snow, as Amarendra holds her down on the ground and Mahendra gleefully scoops fresh snow into her. She awards herself 10 points for correctly estimating that father and son would not pick her side in a fight, and thrashes, hitting her husband squarely in the chest knocking out his breath.

“Deva, stop hitting me!” he says, sounding honestly hurt and pained. She scoffs, regretting it immediately as her son stuffs more snow into her mouth.

Bhalla breaks up the fight, bodily lifting his brother off of the damsel in distress, and nudging the snow monster away with his leg, where it clings onto his leg like a sloth, wrapping all its limbs around him and looks up at him excitedly. “No.” he tries to sound as stern as he can, but the snow sloth is grinning and shaking its head. “Alright.” He acquiesces and crouches.

Mahendra climbs onto his uncle’s back, Bhalla pulling out all the stops in his elephant impression. The hulk of a man sways from side to side, the child sitting proudly on his back, and he lets himself smile with all the joy he feels on the inside. There is no one here to watch except his brother and his sister, and Bhalla grows warm as he realizes he has come to trust them as his _family_. "Faster!" shouts Mahendra giddily from atop him, and Bhalla shakes his head and moves along, raising one hand to imitate an elephant's trunk.

Amarendra flops down onto the ground, snow in his hair and scattered across his clothes, leaning against his wife. "So, about that dinner?" he tries hopefully.

"Ready, with dessert." She kisses the top of his head as he drapes an arm across her waist. "Let the boys play. You eat soon, so we can have our Harry Potter marathon and put him to bed by midnight. I want to tire him out so he doesn't think about catching Santa."

"And the way to not call wizards to his attention is by showing him Harry Potter?" Amarendra grins cheekily as she groans in realization. "Its okay, don't worry, I have some elephant documentaries queued up. I've been meaning to watch them too, and today's a fine day to do that." He kisses her cheek, watching Bhalla tire himself out crawling.

"Hey, fatsos! Get your wee demon off me!" calls Bhalla from across the lawn. Mahendra smacks his butt hard for that, driving him onwards.

Laughing, Amarendra gets up, dusting the snow off his person, and ignores the hand Devasena holds out in reach for support. He bends down and lifts her up bridal-style and carries her into their home, utterly oblivious to the hoots and whistles from the boys. He can only see the stars reflected in her eyes, twinkling and shining bright as she laces her hands together behind his neck, the happiness and joy in their marriage having grown a hundred times over the enthusiasm they had had when he first carried her over the threshold fifteen years ago.

**Author's Note:**

> In my head this is what it looks like:  
> Amarsena: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1EmqzI-InZY/maxresdefault.jpg  
> the adults: https://www.instagram.com/p/BTmHo6OlAxT/?hl=en&taken-by=ranadaggubati  
> mahendra: https://content.newsinc.com/jpg/664/31085564/40057673.jpg?t=1475179140 (forgive the whitewashing my googling skills are subpar)
> 
> Leave a comment if you like! :D


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